A forest fire finally brought under control

The image

A forest after a fire: scorched trunks, ash on the ground, thin smoke rising. The flames are out. Perhaps firefighters are still there, beating down the last embers; perhaps rain has done the work. The picture is of the fire's end, not its spread.

The fire is described as an image only, and nothing on this page reads the degree as harm to anyone.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Fire put out", and our keynote: a force that was consuming everything is brought to an end. Both are ours.

What the image shows is the moment after: the danger is over, the damage visible, and the ground ready, in time, to grow again. We read the degree as the ending of something that had run out of control, a passion, a quarrel or an effort that was burning up more than it gave. One way to see it is in the relief and exhaustion that follow when a long struggle stops. Forests often regrow after fire, so the image can also be read as clearing, the start of a slow renewal. The Sabian tradition takes the picture as a description of a quality and does not read it as an event in a life.

In Hill's reading, a degree inherits the mood of the one before and points toward the one after. Before it comes Aquarius 18, a man whose mask has been pulled off, exposure; here the exposure is of burnt ground. After it comes Aquarius 20, news carried by a great white dove, where the end of the fire gives way to a message of peace.

As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 19, a party on board a houseboat. The houseboat party floats on water, at ease and festive; the forest has just come through fire, and the pair can be read as celebration and the quiet after a struggle.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 18°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 19°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 18°54′ reads Aquarius 19, and so does one at Aquarius 18°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 20 after Aquarius 18°59′, or back into Aquarius 18 before Aquarius 18°00′. That is why the chart shows the minute beside the degree. In EsoTerrier's Sabian chart the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant are read first, then the Midheaven and the planets; each placement in Aquarius 19 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 18, Aquarius 20 and Leo 19 beside it.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Where the image comes from

Recorded by Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the picture she saw for an unseen card; one of 360 done in a single day; published by Jones in 1953 sourced

Degree before and after

Aquarius 18 and Aquarius 20, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 19, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 18°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 19; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 18. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed

How the schools read it

Marc Edmund Jones (1953)

Gives the degree a symbol line, a commentary, a one-word keyword and a positive and a negative reading. We quote none of it.

Dane Rudhyar (1973)

Rewords the image and adds a keynote and a commentary of his own, numbering the degrees as Jones did. In copyright to 2068; not used, and the place he gives the degree in his own structure is not shown.

Lynda Hill (1995, 2004)

Uses the symbols as an oracle, with her own commentary, and reads each degree beside the one before and the one after. Her rule and her two names are cited here; her text is not used.

The Sabian Assembly

Jones's own study group serves the 1953 image and keyword of a degree in its oracle, without commentary, on purpose.

EsoTerrier

Our keynote: A force that was consuming everything is brought to an end.

Claims about it

• The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.

  false

  What the record shows: Her words survive only as Jones's pencilled notes of 1925. Jones reworded them in 1931 and 1953, Rudhyar in 1936 and 1973, and Hill in her books.

• Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.

  false

  What the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.

• Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.

  false

  What the record shows: They are his rewording, with his own keynotes and commentary, renewed in 2002 and in US copyright to the end of 2068. None of them is used here.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Aquarius 18: Exposure the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 20: Message of peace the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 19: Floating festivity the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to